VLC Player

VLC Player is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project.

VLC is highly configurable, has a build-in control API and performs well with high-bandwidth media files.

The Experience Manager and Agent both support VLC Player as a Pre-installed Application and may be controlled via the Control Gateway.

See: VLC Player Protocol.

This document steps through how to add VLC Player to the Experience Manager as a Pre-installed Application so that it may be launched with the Experience Agent and Controlled by the Control Gateway.

Install VLC

Download VLC Player on your Node and follow the installation instructions for your platform.

Take note of the installations location, this will be needed later to configure the application. Common locations include:

• Debian Linux: /usr/bin/vlc or /usr/bin/cvlc (Chromeless)
• macOS: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC
• Windows: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe

Add Application

If you haven't already, configure VLC as a Pre-installed Application.

Configure Node Template

VLC Player may be controlled directly by the Control Gateway using the VLC Player Protocol.

For the Control Gateway to interact with VLC, VLC must be launched with the http interface. When configuring the Node Template, add the following arguments:

--extraintf http --http-host 0.0.0.0 --http-port 8080 --http-password yourpassword

INFO

The --http-port and --http-password may be changed as needed. Note them to configure the Node control protocol.

Add Node Control Protocol

For control, Nodes and Node Applications must be added to the Control Gateway as controlled Node.

1. Navigate to Control/Node Controls
2. Select + Add

First select the Node that the VLC Node Template was applied to, this tells the Control Gateway where to find the instance of VLC you want to control.

Consider setting an Alias, by default, the Alias will be the Node’s Alias, but alias’s must be unique with a Cluster (a Node implementing to Control Interfaces cannot share the same alias). Set the Alias to my-node-vlc or my-node-media-player.

Set the Control Protocol to VideoLan VLC Players.

The VLC Protocol requires that you specify the password set in the Node Template arguments. Additionally, if you specified a port other than 8080 for --http-port you will need to specify this as well.

{
    "password": "yourpassword",
    "port": "8080"
}

INFO

All configuration, regardless of underlying type must have String values to be compatible with the Node encryption scheme. Values other than strings will be rejected.

Select Save and restart your Control Gateway Agent.

Next Steps

Once VLC is connected within the Control Gateway you can control the running VLC instance using using the VLC Protocol.

See Cloud Connect to connect for direct control.

See Media Player Interface for controls.